Tom Kando
My previous post's title was: It's the Guns, Stupid.
I subsequently thought: There is a simple way to prove this: Just draw up a list of places, list two variables for each place, namely (1) per capita gun ownership and (2) per capita murders, and see if there is a correlation between the two. For example, one could use a list of our 50 states for this or a list of the world's roughly 200 countries.
There
is anecdotal and journalistic evidence
that states and countries with high rates of gun ownership also have high murder
rates (e.g. Texas vs. Massachusetts, or the US vs, Holland). But I can't think of any systematic attempt to correlate the two
variables, using a list of states or countries. So I did it myself. It was
quite simple. I chose to list countries rather than US states. To make it
easier on myself I reduced the population to 45 Aimportant@ countries. I then listed each country's
rate of gun ownership and its murder rate. This produced a bi-variate 2x2 table, on
which I did a Chi Square significance test.
Of the 45 countries in my sample, 25 were Ahigh gun ownership@ and 20 were Alow gun ownership@ Of the same 45 countries, 17 were Ahigh murder rate@ and 28 were Alow murder rate. The table below gives the distribution of the 45 countries into 4 cells, as indicated:
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Cell 3: Low rates of gun ownership and yet high murder rates: India, Nigeria, Cuba, Kenya, Ethiopia.
Cell 4: Low rates of gun ownership and therefore low murder rates: Spain, Iran, Ireland, Israel, UK, Egypt, China, Netherlands, Poland, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Holy See, Indonesia, Taiwan.
Chi Square reveals a p value of .11, meaning that the data don=t even support the hypothesized relationship at the 10% significance level. I suppose that I can claim @directional@ support for my hypothesis: Only one fourth of the countries with few guns have high murder rates, whereas nearly half of the countries with many guns have high murder rates. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Of course, there is much more to the guns-and-murders issue.
The twelve countries in cell #1 - many guns and many murders - are unsurprising. The US distinguishes itself as having BY FAR the highest rate of gun ownership in the world - 121%. The gun ownership rates for the remaining 11 countries in this high-gun-ownership group range between 22% (Pakistan) and 8% (Brazil).
Neither can we be surprised by the fifteen few-guns-few-murders countries in Cell #4. They are what the hypothesis predicts. They include advanced democracies as well as some totalitarian countries.
More unanticipated are the 13 countries in cell #2 - many guns but few murders. These are by and large highly developed democracies. Their rates of gun ownership range from 35% (Canada) to 11% (Hungary). Their ability to reconcile substantial gun ownership with low murder rates must be due to wise gun control policies, including prohibition of rapid-fire and automatic weapons of war, while allowing simple hunting guns.
The correlation between gun ownership rates and murder rates might have been much stronger if I had included in my sample (1) Most Caribbean islands, (2) other island nations, (3) most African countries, (4) Middle Eastern countries, (5) South American countries, (6) the Yugoslavia successor states and (7) other Eastern European countries:
I proceeded to examine and correlate rates of gun ownership and murder rates for another 70 countries, namely countries that rank high on both variables.
1. Caribbean islands: Bahamas, US Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Anguilla, Santa Lucia, Montserrat, Curacao = 13
2.Other island nations: Falklands, New Caledonia, Reunion, Guam, Samoa, Faroe Islands, Mauritius, Tuvalu = 8
3. Africa: Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, Puntland, Somaliland, Angola, South Sudan, Ghana, Lesotho, Central African Republic, Congo, Eswatini = 12
4. Middle East: Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan , Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Bahrein, Afghanistan, Syria = 13
5. South America: Uruguay, French Guiana, Paraguay, Suriname, Guyana, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Belize, Costa Rica = 10
6. Yugoslavia successor: Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia = 7
7. Other Eastern European countries: Lithuania, Czech Republic, Albania, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, = 7
A majority of these 70 countries rank high on both gun ownership and murder rates. The murder rates are especially high in the small island nations of the Caribbean and in South America.
The US Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Anguilla, Saint Martin, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Puerto Rico, Montserrat and Curacao all have one of the world=s top 25 murder rates. Five of these states also have an above average rate of gun ownership.
South America similarly supports my hypothesis: As we saw, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Brazil all fall in the category of Ahigh murder rates@ and Ahigh gun possession rates.@ Several of these countries have among the world=s top homicide rates. In addition, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Belize and Costa Rica also combine above average murder rates with above average gun possession rates.
However, statistics from tiny island nations can be meaningless. Take the Falkland islands for example: In the most recent year, two people were murdered there, out of a population of 1,000. This gives the Falkland Islands a murder rate of 200 per 100,000, by far the highest in the world for that year.
In conclusion: 1) A high rate of gun ownership is predictive of a high murder rate. However, (2) effective gun control should not necessarily focus just on the total number of fire arms in circulation, but the TYPES of firearm,. (3) The US is an outlier when it comes to gun ownership, head and shoulders above all other countries. However, its murder rate is unexceptional, at 6 per 100,000. Seventy-five countries in the world have higher murder rates and about one hundred and twenty countries have lower murder rates than the US. (4) That many factors impact the relationship between gun ownership and murder is shown by the fact that Spain and Brazil both own about 8 guns per 100 people, but Brazil=s murder rate is 27 times higher than Spain.
